Dear Sir,--Unless I were to be married myself, I should despair ever
being able to describe a wedding so well as you have done: had I known
your talent before, I would have desired an epithalamium. I believe the
Princess[1] will have more beauties bestowed on her by the occasional
poets, than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new
Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope, that all they have
said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, having heard
it was rude to talk Latin before women, propose complimenting her in
English; which she will be much the better for. I doubt most of them,
instead of fearing their compositions should not be understood, should
fear they should: they write they don't know what, to be read by they
don't know who. You have made me a very unreasonable request, which I
will answer with another as extraordinary: you desire I would burn your
letters: I desire you would keep mine. I know but of one way of making
what I send you useful, which is, by sending you a blank sheet: sure
you would not grudge threepence for a halfpenny sheet, when you give as
much for one not worth a farthing. You drew this last paragraph on you
by your exordium, as you call it, and conclusion. I hope, for the
future, our correspondence will run a little more glibly, with dear
George, and dear Harry [Conway]; not as formally as if we were playing a
game at chess in Spain and Portugal; and Don Horatio was to have the
honour of specifying to Don Georgio, by an epistle, whither he would
move. In one point I would have our correspondence like a game at chess;
it should last all our lives--but I hear you cry check; adieu!

Dear George, yours ever.

[Footnote 1: Augusta, younger daughter of Frederic II., Duke of
Saxe-Gotha, married (27th April, 1736) to Frederick, Prince of Wales,
father of George III.